Because of the Times This one really hit home for me, not because I read Science Fiction but because this is the reality in most of the fiction I read growing up. Girls were always second class citizens or bitches or Scarlett O'Hara types. No one you wanted to emulate or look up to.
2 comments:
Ah; she should have been reading Ursula Le Guin, and Tiptree, and some of the more thoughtful socially-oriented sf (by women and men) as well.
Her brother and father were right; for many decades, writers who had great imaginations for future technology and alien races, nevertheless were often as racist, sexist, and culturally biased as most people in their contemporary culture. That can't be retroactively changed, so I'm not sure what reaction she expected.
If she learns to write coherently, she can create something more enlightened. (By our contemporary standards, that is. In fifty years it may seem barbaric to our grandkids.)
One one level I know that you're right, Manuel. People tend to write what they know, and back then women weren't considered capable of being anything but mothers and housewives. The odd thing is that women have been working outside the home for centuries. Western (Old West USA) women and farm women especially did a great deal of work that was considered man's work. Yet much of this doesn't show up in our stories.
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